no … ! drones are a strong weapon system and the only one which can be attacked and destroyed ! its just a logical option that all your oponents are targeting this weapon system first because its the most danger …
no ! drones need to be an manual weapon system like the other weapon systems ! i can understand why you want an autonomus weapon system with drones but this dont work in eve online ! autonomus weapon systems will lead in botting and we all can agree this is bad … if you dont agree then youre a botter !
Drones are controlled – gamewise – by the bandwidth. So adding more – as I suggested might not be such a good thing. It is the Good Gallenteemphasized text** in me.
Drone Aggro: There is a newer sleeper/Drifter/Triglavian AI which reacts to drones better than the older mission/belt AI. We, as players, tend to hate EWAR and are biased to shoot it with a higher priority. The newer AI tends to do that also. So just adding a target painter to your ship tends towards better drone aggro control. At least that is my beliefs. Make the ratz think you are more dangerous.
Sins of the Botters: Our style of game play and whether the Devs are allocated time and funds to work on it is a complex series of meetings at the local brewhaus in Reykjavik involving a dartboard… Not everything is predicated on the anti-botting mantra.
Actual physical drone control: The icons in the drone window I find to be an improvement. But, how/where to add more drone controls? Cause I like the idea of having more options with drones. Being able to set a logi drone to orbit and the others comes to it to repair, or the logi to chase after the combat drones for example. Salvage drone to start farthest to closest legal wrecks or closest to farthest another option.
Winter Nexus: Makes for a ‘better’ involvement, for me it does. I enjoy battling the drone aggro
So, the Carrier interface already exists in-game, and as I’m sure you’re aware, carriers cannot just AFK rat with fighters out. Their fighter interface could be adapted to be something like this:
Drone flight 1: 5 Hobgoblin IIs. Controls: “Attack.” “Orbit (possibly Orbit at 0, 5km, 10km, etc.).” “Focus my target (drones target what you’re shooting).” “Return to drone bay.”
Drone flight 2: 1 Shield Pulse Drone. Controls: "Activate shield healing pulse (restores HP to nearby drones). “Orbit.” “Return to drone bay.”
Drone flight 3: 3 Salvage drones. Controls: “Salvage target.” “Salvage all nearby wrecks.” “Orbit.” Return to drone bay.
This little interface would just be another UI element like the Carrier controls, and crucially, it would be controlling the drone flights as groups of drones instead of expecting you to micro-manage 15 drones at a time.
Also, I am all for completely removing all passive drone behavior entirely, but then there has to be a concession for how “easy” drones are to kill. If rats can aggro drones and kill them, micro-managing them becomes a chore. If drones become an “active” weapon system that requires you to manually command their every action, maybe we could make them untargetable by NPCs and only able to be targeted by players.
Unfortunately, we will never fully eliminate gameplay automation, so, I still don’t believe “But the bots!!!” is an excuse to not do something cool with drones.
no need because its not that hard that youre drones survive any PvE situation … and how i said before … if youre not in a specific drone ship then there is no need to use drones ever !
Players just miss the old days when they could drop a bunch of drones and they’d circle around endlessly killing things while they were AFK watching YouTube.
Drones actually require more effort now - and if you’re not paying attention, NPCs can and will take them down.
Any drone-based ships are at a severe disadvantage in this event.
yeah … i also miss the old days where i entering a mission with a “tank” and they never switched from them ! i know its not neccecary with a marauder wth 2500+ dps but it still was nice …
but i know its a bad mechanic if rats never switch target and its good that they now switch target !
Cannot confirm this. I have run several sites in Gilas for testing exactly that and Drone Aggro simply isn’t a problem. CN Vespas for the frigs, AugVespas for everything else, works perfectly. In most sites I don’t even need to recall a Drone once, only before the boss I scoop them in to get his aggro on the ship. Will test Ishtar too, but I seriously doubt the outcome will differ.
Not everything is predicated on the anti-botting mantra.